Complaint against Mr. R.Cornelissen concerning arguments used in his rejection, on behalf of the EC, with respect to a citizen’s complaint by
Dr Hubert Frantzen, Spain, against the Netherlands’ new Healthcare Insurance System.
Ref.: EMPL/E/3/EV/cv/CI(NL Zvw)D(06)6751, 31.03.06-004782.

Dear Sir

On January, 31 the European Commission received my letter complaining about the way the Netherlands abuses its migrated pensioners in its new Healthcare Insurance system. Among the community law arguments were the following:
- lack of competence;
- misinterpretation and wrongful application of 1408/71;
- violation of the free movement principle, resulting in people returning to the Netherlands as well as people abandoning their emigration plans.
The Commission advised that the matter would be handled by its senior officer, Mr. Robert Cornelissen.
Eventually I received a rejection of my complaint by Mr. Cornelissen and I really was flabbergasted by some of his arguments. It was clear to me that Mr. Cornelissen’s letter of rejection could not be construed as anything else, other than lending a helping hand to the Dutch government regardless of the case made against it.

I consider this a breach of trust as well as a breach of duty. I emphasize that it is not the rejection in itself, which is the reason for my complaint. It is the way Mr. Cornelissen made a joke of community rules and principles, thereby treating a complaining citizen as some kind of a mental case.

At the bottom of page 2, Mr. Cornelissen ended a very suggestive treatise of the free and unlimited competence of Member-States to organise and finance their social healthcare system as they seem fit (no reference was made to anything like ‘within the boundaries set by the general principles and rules of community law’; no reference whatsoever was made to art.13,1, sub f or even article 33,1 of 1408/71) with the grotesque statement that according to 1408/71 it would be forbidden for the state of residence to absorb pensioners of another Member-State into its own social security system, forgetting pour besoin de la cause even article 28bis itself. An understandable mistake, a temporary lapsus mentis?

It is in the middle of page 3 that Mr. Cornelissen makes a really unforgivable statement. Whilst in my complaint against the Netherlands I only mentioned the aims and principles of free movement, Mr. Cornelissen referred to art.39 of the Treaty and stated that the freedom of people moving to another Member-State is restricted to those people who are migrating or have migrated for the purpose of ‘a professional activity’. Pensioners therefore cannot invoke this freedom.

This is a shameful (but also purposeful) misrepresentation of community law that can only result in European citizens becoming (more) embittered at the way Europe is concerned about the States and enterprises and does not care for the people at all.

There have been a number of Dutch pensioners residing in different EU-states complaining about the adverse effects of the new Dutch law, which right now is being defended by the authorities on the grounds that pensioners are obliged to make use of their rights to homeland social security, thereby changing a legal right into an obligation without any regard to the law but with a keen eye on the country’s purse!

These people are now consulting with each other on a score of internet-forums and the former lawyers among them are slowly sharpening their legal teeth and claws. We have studied the changes proposed by the Commission and we look at them as attempts towards the creation of a Big Brother Brussels, the subsidiary-principle notwithstanding. We definitely intend to organize migrated senior citizens into a movement to fight these spooky tendencies. We are certainly not going to stand aside and let the 'Europe' our generation created be abused by a Member –State for its own purposes or by ambitious European civil servants for theirs.

Cordially yours,

Dr Hubert Frantzen,
Andalucía, Spain.

Copies will be sent to the President of the Commission, the competent Member of the Commission, the President of the European Parliament as well as to the European Ombudsperson.
Mr. Cornelissen will be informed about this procedure in my reply to the ‘rationes decidendi’ of his decision rejecting the above-mentioned citizen’s complaint.